Just to makes things clear at the outset, this is not a blog about food. Or wine. Or cooking in general. It is, however, a blog about this wild toboggan ride commonly known as Life, and a big part of mine has to do with food, wine, and cooking in general. So, there you have it. And now back to our regularly scheduled program.

Certain experiences are so overwhelmingly paradigm shifting that when you have them you feel like your very molecular structure has been altered somehow and you know instinctively and viscerally that you will never be the same again. When you move overseas, for example. When you become a parent. When someone you love dies unexpectedly. When you are bit by a radioactive spider and suddenly look buff in a skin-tight unitard. When, for the first time, you make jam. Jam?!? Yep.

Pick your berries

Saturday morning found me itching
To get on over to my grandma’s kitchen
The sweetest little berries was cooking up right
And then we’d put them in a canning jar and seal them up tight

I have learned lots of things since moving to a farm:

1. There’s a reason that there are no farmers amongst the annual Forbes 500.

2. Roosters do not crow at dawn, but all effing day (and night, if the mood should hit them. The day I decide–after 20 years of vegetarianism–to eat meat once again, I will personally throttle a rooster with my bare hands and devour it with much vindictive satisfaction.)

3. “A woman’s work is never done.” is one of the truest aphorisms ever uttered.

4. If you want beef that isn’t chock full of antibiotics, hormones, and other stuff you wouldn’t want your dog to eat, you’re going to have to pay more than two bucks a pound.

5. There is immense satisfaction to be had in growing good food, preserving good food, and serving good food.

Chop your berries

We have Smucker’s, Welches, Knotts Berry Farm
But a little homemade jam never did a body no harm
A little local motion is all we need
To close down these corporate jam factories

And that last little nugget of wisdom is all bound up in a jar of homemade jam, which has to be one of the easiest thing to make in the history of cooking by fire. With just a little fruit, sugar, and—that most precious of ingredients—time, through some sort of mysterious culinary alchemy you end up with row upon row of jewel-toned glass jars shimmering on your pantry shelves. Eating a slice of fresh hot bread slathered with sweet butter and homemade strawberry jam brings on such a feeling of life satisfaction that if, in that exact moment, an asteroid were to drop out of the sky and pick you off, you would feel no regret.

Cook your berries

Yeah, we have a little revolution sweeping the land
Now once more everybody’s making homemade jam
So won’t you call your friends up on the telephone
You invite ’em on over, you make some jam of your own

I find the act of making jam meditative…all the time I pick and wash fruit, peel, chop, and otherwise prepare it, sterilize the glass jars, and slowly stir the simmering mixture as it lets out its pectin and begins to thicken into jam, I reflect. I reflect on the abundance of what the earth offers. (When she damn well pleases. The moody wench also likes to send late freezes, hail storms, and record rains. See item number 1 above.) I reflect on how often the most soul-satisfying food is the simplest. I reflect on how many generations of women before me have “put up” food to feed their families, and how in this modern world of the information super highway and molecular gastronomy and Vibram Five Fingers this art remains largely unchanged.

Eat your berries

We’ll be making jam
Strawberry jam, mmmm-mm
If you want the best jam
You gotta make your own

And mostly I reflect on who will be eating this jam, this sparkling jar of distilled love. My boys, whose favorite part of jam making is climbing the fig and apricot trees or going on blackberry picking expeditions along the tracks in the woods. My friends, who know that due to a Aspberger-like social akwardness I often substitute gifts for hugs, but the sentiment is the same. My guests, who have given me so much over the years in exchange for my modest offering of fruit, sugar, and time. And myself, who sometimes needs just a quiet moment with some simple strawberry sweetness to survive this wild toboggan ride of a life.

Eat your berries again, this time with feeling

Aw, one more time
Oh, makin’ that jam
Yeah, Strawberry jam
If you want the best jam
You gotta make your own

Sometimes blogging channels your inner philosopher and you wax poetic about the existential joy that seems to blossom effortlessly when you live in a place where every meal is an out-of-body experience, and sometimes blogging rhymes with slogging and you use the space for some nuts and bolts advice about What’s Going On. And let me tell you, after a week stuck in the house in rainy weather and two kids home sick with a stomach virus, I’m feeling pretty nutty…and yearning for some outdoor fun…so let’s talk rafting.

Wet and wild, or wild and wet. Depends.

We went rafting twice last summer with a group of friends, and I have to say the last time I had that much fun wearing skin-tight PVC attire I was definitely 20 years younger (and 20 pounds lighter). The best rafting in Umbria is on the Corna and Nera rivers in the south of the region; in fact, both the competing outfitters we used were along those waterways. Our group had kids as young as five and adults into their sixties, and everyone had a ball.

Rafting Umbria

The first company we used was Rafting Umbria in a little town called Serravalle di Norcia along the Corna River. The downside of Rafting Umbria was the pretty spartan base camp; the changing rooms were tents (which were roughly the same temperature as the surface of the sun inside), there are no lockers to keep your personal belongings, so they are just kind of piled up on benches and on the floor, the showers are big plastic water containers on the roof of a camper with a hose attached. There is a picnic table where we had our packed lunch, but the ground is worn down to dirt and on the whole it’s just not that picturesque.

Heading out!

On the upside, however, the descent was fun, Fun, FUN! The river was calm enough to feel comfortable having little kids on the rafts, but you got enough rapids action to get a little wet and have a little fun. The group stopped a couple of times along the route at good swimming hole places (one with a fun cliff to jump off of) and at a freshwater spring along the bank of the river where you could drink. The guides were professional and affable and they take pictures along the route (and a short video) and burn a cd which you can purchase at the end of the day (€15). The length of river you descend is quite pretty, and at the end of the descent the staff had prepared some watermelon and water to pass the time while their shuttle vans took us back in shifts to the base camp. (Rates: 35 adult/25 kids under 14)

Some beautiful scenery along the descent

Rafting Marmore

Our second experience was with Rafting Marmore out of Arrone near the Marmore waterfalls in the Terni Province. Here the base camp was great…they use the buildings in a public park, so real bathrooms with showers, changing rooms with benches and hooks, an equipment shed where they keep the wetsuits and rafts, and an absolutely lovely grassy park along the river to picnic lunch at and play around in before and after the descent.

Base camp

The descent itself, however, just isn’t that exciting. This would be the perfect run for families with really young kids (or, perhaps, adults with physical limitations) or who have never been rafting before. The river is almost too calm, with little or no rapids, and there isn’t anything interesting enough along the route to justify stopping for. After the promise of a clean and organized base camp operation, we were disappointed by the rafting itself. The guides were professional, but a bit stand-off-ish, and the overall fun factor was unquestionably lower than our experience with Rafting Umbria. That said, you can easily work in a visit to both Arrone (a charming gem of a hilltop village) and the Marmore Waterfalls either before or after your run, which is a big plus. (Rates: 35 adults/30 kids under 16)

Getting back to the base

Both of these companies provide wetsuits (which are washed and disinfected after every use), life vests, safety helments, and all the tecnical equipment you need, plus a shuttle service back to base camp at the end of the descent.

Fun for adults and kids

For the more adventurous (and older) rafter, Rafting Marmore offers a challenging level four route which passes under the Marmore Waterfalls. It looks like loads of fun on their website…unfortunately, the minimum age requirement is 16 (maximum 55) so it will be quite a few years before we can try it out. But for travellers looking for a more vigorous, exciting, and certainly picturesque run, you can take a look here.

It’s a sad day, my friends, when your eight year old son fixes you with a look of impending doom and says, “Mamma, I have to tell you something. But you’re not going to like it.” And your eyes sweep over the china cabinet, which shows no signs of a soccer ball having been kicked through it, your nose sniffs the air, which does not reveal the acrid odor of legos being baked to see if they will stay stuck together, your hand touches the throat of his younger brother, in which a vital pulse is still beating. So how bad can it be?

“Mamma, I don’t, um, really, you know, like peanut butter.”

And in that instant the universe shifts just a smidgen, the light seems to dim, your heartbeat slows in dismay, and what you have suspected for the past eight years is suddenly proven without a doubt.

Your children are not, and never will be, American.

I mean, I have had other clues of this over the years. My sons were scandalized by their American cousins wearing un-ironed t-shirts on a recent trip to the States, they are convinced that eating cherries and drinking water in the same sitting will somehow land them in the hospital, and they have vowed they will never move out of my home (they are in for a big surprise come age 18). They prefer prosciutto and bread to pancakes for breakfast, say that they are annoyed when bored or nervous when stressed out, and are constantly urging me to pass on the right. However, until their rejection of the national childhood dish of the USA, I had harbored a hope that I could still, somehow, claim them as mine.

The one who doesn’t like peanut butter.

There is a famous adage which says that parenting is essentially a process of slowly letting go of your child from the minute he is born, and this process is even more poignant when part of that letting go is not only of your child but of your childhood. Let’s face it, one of the best parts of parenting is reliving your own youth…the one you really had (I got my kids into Star Wars, early and hard) and the one you wish you had (I took them to Disneyland, where I always dreamed of going as a kid.). But when they are growing up in a country and culture different from yours, it’s hard to engage them in your passions, your aspirations, your expectations. You want them to fit in (and, coincidentally, not be ashamed of you—their foreign parent. Their foreign parent who is still concerned with her cool quotient 39 years into the game.) but not go native.

The one who doesn’t like wearing unironed tshirts.

The irony here (because ain’t life ironical?) is that I lived the flip side of this same situation growing up in an immigrant Greek family in the 1970s. I think now about how dismayed Yaya must have been to watch as subsequent generations gradually gave up the Orthodox faith, shunned the language, married non-Greeks, (“Honey,” she would say to me, “You find nice Greek boy to marry. You make your Yaya happy, koukla.”) and finally ended up considering the gyros and yelling “Opa!” as the saganaki was set alight by a Mexican waiter the pinnacle of Greek culture.

The ones who claim they will never move away from home.

My children are not growing up Cub fans, don’t recognize the Good Humor ice cream truck, have never read the Sunday funny pages. They will not have memories of fireworks on the 4th, of a day with cheese blintzes for breakfast/burritos for lunch/spanakopita for dinner, of trick-or-treating. My children are living a life infinitely different from the one I did and in some ways this makes them less mine. My children are putting down roots and flourishing in a different land and I am, bit by bit, letting go of their future.

I think there is a moment in life when you realize you have finally, after many close shaves, hit bottom. When you have to have the courage to take a good, long look at yourself and admit that you have a problem. That your habit is ruining your health, jeopardizing your family life, alienating your friends, and compromising your career. That point when you suddenly realize that you, like Liz or Betty or that really emaciated model whose name escapes me right now, are an addict and it’s time to reclaim your life and self respect.

I am about to take the first step. Hello, my name is Rebecca. I ate all my children’s Easter candy. Again.

L’uova di Pasqua

It’s not really about candy. It’s about chocolate, since Easter candy here is almost exclusively huge chocolate Easter eggs, which are hollow and hide a surprise (usually a little toy or keychain) inside. My sons got 22 of them this year (we have many, many relatives). Each of them weighs about half a kilo. That’s a lot of chocolate, and a pretty big temptation for an avowed chocoholic like yours truly. It’s like holding a gamblers anon convention in Vegas.

The diabolic chocolate eggs

Every year I say to myself, “Okay, this is the year you are going to show some self control. This year you are going to break up all those chocolate eggs into little pieces and freeze them for future baking. And donate some of the chocolate to starving children in the Third World. And throw a big dinner party and make a huge pot of chocolate fondue for dessert.”

Instead what happens is that those damn things sit there, in their shiny mylar wrapping, calling to me. It wakes me up at night. It interrupts my work. It becomes an obsession. So I say to myself, “Okay, one. You can eat one egg.” I make a tiny incision in the back side of one of the egg wrappings with a really sharp knife, and, with surgical precision, cut away a little piece. It’s Venchi. Milk chocolate. It’s really good. So I grab the egg, rip the paper to shreds, and proceed to stuff the rest of the egg by handfuls into my mouth, all the time keeping one eye on the door should my husband or children walk in on this spectacle.

Note the mesmerizing mylar decorative paper

Luckily, my kids are still kind of fuzzy about numbers above ten, so they don’t really notice that their eggs are slowly culled as the days pass. Plus, I give them the toys, which is all they really care about anyway.

Unfortunately, my husband is not that fuzzy about numbers above ten, and is horrified to discover that his wife has managed to put away about 10 kilos of chocolate in less than a week. I really think it is one of the few times in the almost 20 years I have known him that I have felt real shame. That and the three times I crashed the car which increased our commercial van insurance – one sure insurance rate.

Why, why can’t they eat the disgustingly unappetizing Easter candy we have in the States here? I mean, if my choices were yellow sugar covered marshmallow chicks and black jelly beans, there wouldn’t be much of a problem. I have a vague recollection of liking those things when I was, oh, five, but the very thought of eating them now makes my stomach turn. It’s funny how we grow out of food. I also used to love that peanut butter and jelly together in one jar stuff and Oreos. Thank God my taste buds have matured, though my self control has remained what it was in kindergarten.

Even more of a temptation when not encased in mylar

We also have a momentous amount of chocolate in the house around Easter because we throw an annual Easter egg hunt. We began when my oldest son was born (I think he was barely walking the first year we held the hunt), and every year the party gets bigger and better. I love the Easter party, though we rarely have decent weather. Usually, about 100 people huddle under our porch watching a driving, freezing rain come down and wait for a ten minute window in which the kids can book into the garden and collect the sodden eggs.

After years of trial and error, and running over months old rotten eggs with the lawn mower, we have, for the past couple of years, only hidden plastic eggs (which still get run over with the mower in August, but just make a terrifying noise without the sickening stench). We hide a couple hundred of them, and inside each one is a little chocolate egg that the finder gets to keep and take home. I buy those little chocolate eggs in bulk, and strangely seem to overbuy every year. It’s uncanny. Call it fate.

My boys with their Easter baskets ready to take to Mass for the traditional blessing; their chocolate eggs are in the center

Of course, that’s far too much sugar for my babes, so the sacrifice I make for them is to consume them all myself. Sometimes, as a parent, you have to take the bullet for your kids.

The Easter egg hunt is a very popular party with our set because of the novelty. They don’t do egg hunts in Italy; it’s very much an Anglo-American tradition, as far as I can tell. Since my elder son was born, I have been really working hard to bring a little bit of American Childhood to Italy. We have the Halloween party, Thanksgiving Dinner, the Christmas Cookie Decorating get together, the Easter Egg hunt. We haven’t had a Fourth of July shindig yet, but I think it’s just a matter of time.

Only Italians would use a bottle of wine for scale

I find it strange, and a bit out of character, that I put so much weight on these American holidays. There are lots of different expat profiles here in Italy, which run a vast gamut of different living abroad experiences. There are those who live in a kind of Anglo-American bubble: they don’t speak Italian, may not even send their kids to Italian schools, don’t socialize with Italians, and are very shaky on Italian law, politics, and pop culture. I suspect they live here primarily for the food. Some in this group, mostly those who have found themselves residents here through marriage or career, also live in a state of suspended animation, passing most of their time and funnelling most of their resources, to those periods that they go “back home”. Home being that place they left, oh, twenty years ago.

Then there are those on the complete opposite end of the spectrum, who have glommed onto Italy with all the passion of the newly converted. They refuse to speak their mother tongue, even when introduced to fellow English speakers, have nothing good to say about their home country, which they visit once every ten years during which visit they annoy all their friends and relatives touting non-stop the joys of living in Italy, have nothing bad to say about Italy, even when the utility bill comes, and wouldn’t eat at McDonald’s even if you held a loaded pistol to their temple.

After a brief stint as a passionate newly converted (until my first utility bill came, which set me in a pining-for-home rut for awhile), I have settled at a place pretty much right smack in the middle. I love the country I live in now, but also have some nostalgia for the one I left years ago. When I am in the States I tend to make pasta and change into clean clothes to run to the grocery store. When I am in Italy, I prepare pancakes for breakfast and drop my kids off at school in sweatpants. I have one foot here, and one there. And both my hands in the chocolate eggs.

I have a little confession to make. Each year, right around Easter, I am reminded of this deep love I harbor which surfaces in a cyclical fashion with the coming of spring. I mean, not your normal “Oh, I love that sweater on her” or “I just love to curl up on the sofa in front of a roaring fire” kind of love, but that obsessive, slightly creepy “I want to start a life with you and buy you presents” kind of love.

Which is weird, since the object of my ardor is a foodstuff.

Though, to be honest, I’ve noticed that my passion for food is growing more acute as I have become a middle-aged mother of two and things like heavy drinking, recreational drug use, and sleeping around no longer seem appropriate. Let’s just say that eating is one of the few joys of life left to me.

Torta di Pasqua

And Easter in Umbria offers humanity a dish which represents, in my opinion, the apex of culinary accomplishment. Its ne plus ultra. Its climax. (Ok, now I am getting creepy.) My friends, I present to you Torta di Pasqua (also known as Pizza di Pasqua or simply Torta al Formaggio).

Literally seconds from the oven....

The recipe

This savory cheese bread is a traditional Easter dish around these parts and the recipe varies from family to family and is a closely guarded secret handed down through the generations. However, from what I can glean from years of attentive observation, there are a few key ingredients used in all its variants:

a farmwife, between the ages of 62 and 87

an amazing amount of lard

an outdoor wood-burning brick oven

an astounding amount of lard

eggs, and a lot of ’em

an astonishing amount of lard

parmeggiano, pecorino, and swiss cheese

an insane amount of lard

some other stuff, mainly flour and salt

The Preparation

The preparation of this dish begins weeks before baking day, as the farmwives start to hoard their eggs (News flash: farm fresh eggs keep forever, and they don’t have to go in the fridge. Things you discover when you move to the country.) as they will be using literally dozens to turn out the numerous mushroom-shaped loaves. I suppose you could even say the preparation begins months before, when they butcher their annual hog at Christmas and put aside the lard (Did I mention the awesome amount of lard? For an explanation as to my non-dogmatic interpretation of vegetarianism which allows for the occasional lard intake, see here.) they will later need for the dough.

Kneading the dough

Preparing the pans for the oven

Surveying the oven-ready loaves (note the dollops of lard dotting each one...did I mention the lard?)

The big day

Early on the morning of baking day, the women light the fires in their woodstoves and knead together all the ingredients to make the rich, cheesy bread dough. This is then divided into at least a dozen different tins (many of them refitted industrial sized sardine cans) and left to rest and rise near the warmth of the oven.

Getting the wood stove up to temperature

Sardine can reincarnated as baking tin

Before the flames

Once nicely double or tripled in size and rounded on the top, they are placed into the oven one by one with a large wooden paddle, an olive branch blessed during Mass on Palm Sunday is tucked in with them, a quick prayer to Santa Rita is said (the gist: “Santa Rita, please let our loaves rise””), and the oven door is sealed with mud.

A surprising number of baking tins fit in that oven

After the flames

When they are done, they should have risen over the sides of their tins to take the shape of giant cupcakes and are shiny and golden on top. As you can see, sometimes Santa Rita is a cunning vixen and they don’t rise as much as the bakers would like…leading to the naming of the saint in much different–and probably unprintable–terms.

Despite olive branches and appeals to heaven, the loaves didn't rise as much as hoped

The elixir of the gods

To slice into one of these torte fresh from the oven is to experience bliss. The lard (did I mention the incredible amount of lard?) yields a short, crumbly crust on the outside and a moist, savory crumb inside dotted with melted cubes of swiss cheese. Some recipes use a bit of pepper in the dough, which I enjoy, though it’s tough to get just the right amount without overshadowing the cheese flavor. Our aunt, Zia Anna, gets just the right amount, for example. And I love her for it.

Crispy outside, moist inside

It’s otherwordly freshly baked, but can also be frozed and toasted for weeks afterwards…still delicious, though will not bring you to ecstatic tears, which a steaming hot slice certainly can do.

It takes a lot for me to squeeze my butt onto a minivan with eight other adults for the day. Big money, for example. Brandishing a loaded weapon often will do the trick. Or, if all else fails, the promise of a glass of wine. (more…)

I feel I am uniquely qualified to research and write an article about shopping in Assisi for two reasons:

I absolutely abhor shopping.

I only rarely go into the center of town.

Given these two details, is has to be something really special to lure me into a store in town, but luckily Assisi is full of lovely, offbeat little boutiques unique enough to tempt even the avid non-shopper.

Unfortunately, average run-of-the-mill souvenir hawkers specializing in what we affectionately call in our family “shitky-ditky” are both more numerous and more prominent near the monuments and churches, so at first glance it’s easy to miss my favorite specialty shops. If you are looking for pressboard crosses, friar salt and pepper shakers, or plastic replica medieval weapons, read no further…you can find all that without my help. But if you have your heart set on bringing something home to remember Assisi by which you won’t be able to find anyplace else on earth, you’ve come to the right place.

Food and Wine

I love this wine and gourmet shop….Luana (proprietor and friend) has a wonderful selection of both Umbrian and other Italian wines. She also stocks high end chocolate and coffee, top quality olive oil and pasta, and a whole range of jams, sauces, and condiments. She can help you with your selections and make up a gift basket to bring home with you.

Il Baccanale di Assisi

Farmer Shop, Via San Francesco 4a

This great mix between rustic stone vaulted space and minimalist design furnishing sells products from a local agricultural consortium…heirloom legumes, wild boar salami, hearty aged sheep cheese…but their big seller is their organic, unfiltered, unpasteurised, bottle refermented beers from the San Biagio estate…you can sample before you buy!

Farmershop Assisi's beer

Farmershop Assisi's Cheese

Kids

Alice Laboratorio Artistico, Via San Francesco 8I

I can’t talk up the kids’ t-shirts Alice hand-paints enough…sunflowers, doggies, dinosaurs, poppies, whimsical scenes of Assisi. If you give her a couple of days (and she’s not too busy), she’ll even personalize the back with your choice of name painted in a rainbow of colors. A one-of-a-kind gift.

One of Alice's hand-painted t-shirts

My favorite tee that Alice makes

Franchi, Via Portica 15A

This shop is bursting with wooden toys and decorations…Pinocchio in all sizes and colors, mobiles, wall clocks, rocking horses. Toys from another era yet somehow ageless.

Art

Alice Laboratorio Artistico, Via San Francesco 8I

Aside from her handpainted tshirts, Alice has jewelry, photo albums, paintings and prints. All in her lovely, whimsical style.

A sample of Alice's charming wares

Claudio Carli Studio, Via San Rufino

Claudio Carli is a well-known local artist who works in both watercolor and oil…primarily scenes of Assisi and Umbria. I love his work (we have some hanging in our house) and even if you are not in the market for a work of art, I suggest you stop by his gallery and take a look.

An example of Claudio Carli's work

Artestampa, Via S Francesco, 10c

Handmade woodcut prints of the monuments and backstreets of Assisi. Much more charming than the ubiquitous posters.

This antique shop has mostly big ticket furniture and art, but there are a few small, packable (or shippable) items which are fabulous…primarily their antique prints and majolica tiles. Claudio, the proprietor, is affable and knowledgeable, and the space is chock full of beautiful, unique pieces.

A tragically hip gathering of local contemporary art—if you are looking for something beautifully offbeat, or perhaps offbeatly beautiful, stop in here and have a chat with Francesco, the loquacious and charming gallery curator.

Minigallery Assisi

Detail of a painting shown in Minigallery, Assisi

Jewelry

Assisi has two wonderful jewelry designers with shops: Artigianato del Gioiello on Via San Francesco and Il Forziere on Via San Gabrielle dell’Addolorata. They both make lovely gold and silver pieces worked around precious and semi-precious stones, and also sell commercial lines (though I like their own work better). If you would like something uniquely “Assisan” to remember your visit, consider a gold tau—symbol of redemption much loved by Saint Francis.

L'Artigianato del Gioiello, Assisi

Fashion and accessories

I Colori del Tempo, Via Portica 6/b

A tiny boutique is crammed with scarves, purses, hats, jewelry, and some clothes. Most of their stock is in silk, wool, or cotton and in lovely hues and eye-catching prints.

Il Tapiro, Via San Francesco

This leather workshop has hand-made purses, wallets, belts, and jackets…the shop is owned by Mauro, who is passionate about his products and will treat you right. Florence is the place to go for leather, but if you’re not going to make it there, this boutique is runs a close second place for price and quality.

Paper and Books

One of my favorite stores in Assisi, for both the beautiful antique wooden and glass show cases and the leather-bound wares in them. This shop has gorgeous hand-bound photo albums and journals, florentine printed notepaper, fountain pens, and hard-to-find books about Assisi and Umbria.

Outside of town

Terra Umbra, Via Patrono d’Italia 10, Santa Maria degli Angeli

This is an amazing toy store…fabulous european educational toys, dolls and stuffed animals, science and art projects. Definitely worth the stop in an otherwise unexceptional town, or a perusal of the website for online shopping.

Duda Dida, Assisi

Margiò, Via Los Angeles 57, Santa Maria degli Angeli

A wonderful fresh pasta shop where you can get tagliatelle, cappelletti (with meat filling) and a number of different types of ravioli filled with the traditional spinach and ricotta to the more exotic truffle and sheep cheese made fresh daily.

There are times I truly, absolutely, viscerally love living in rural Umbria.

Times when I am saturated with gratitude for the strange winds that blew me here. Times when I savor every charmed (and charming) moment, when every fabulous meal is a gift, when every bucolic vista is a discovery, when every lazy summer afternoon an epiphany. Times when I revel in my sons’ endearing Italian accent, my husband’s Euro-male je ne sai quoi, my mother-in-law’s hand rolled pasta. Times when exploring the small, family owned shops is an adventure, navigating a government office in another language is a small victory, and painstakingly nourishing a new friendship with a local is a pleasure.

Yes, my friends, there are times when I love this country with all my heart, body, and soul.

And then there are times when my godd@!n freaking telephone line is out of service for a godd@!n freaking month, including Christmas, and I wonder what the hell I am doing in this godd@!n freaking country.

We’ve been at it for a little over five years now. So, who out there in the crowd would like to take a stab at guessing where we are, exactly, in the dream house construction? I hear “choosing window treatments” from the back. The little bald guy here in front says “final touches on landscaping” as he puts away his landscape supplies. Well, everyone hold that thought, and I’ll get to it in a minute.